Rupert Murdoch called today the most humbling moment of his career during testimony before Parliament about the ongoing News International phone hacking scandal. The social media world exploded after Murdoch was hit in the face with a pie, which delayed the hearing about 10 minutes.

We used Social Radar to analyze conversations online.

Rupert Murdoch buzz

Rupert Murdoch mentions are well above the previous highest point in November 2009 when Murdoch made news for claiming News Corp would block Google indexing.

Rupert Murdoch sentiment

Conversations around Rupert Murdoch are currently an average of 55% negative.

Rebekah Brooks sentiment

Interestingly, conversations around former News International Chief Rebekah Brooks are an average of only 45% negative. Brooks resigned from her position because of the scandal, but has not admitted guilt.

Not many words appear more often in the Social Radar database than ‘Obama.’ ‘Facebook,’ ‘Google’ and ‘Twitter’ regularly challenge ‘Obama’ for the most mentioned word online. But as of today, the word ‘debt’ has officially surpassed ‘Obama’ mentions.

Debt mentions

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the Senate today that they will remain in session “continuously” every day until Congress passes legislation that prevents a default in raising the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling.

If something is not passed before the August 2 deadline for action, the federal government would, in effect, go dark. Reid warned, “Literally every function of government could cease. Social security checks, payments to our veterans.”

Last week Facebook attempted to create buzz about an upcoming announcement today, inviting people to an “awesome” event online. It didn’t take long for the news to leak that the event would focus around Facebook’s long-rumored video chat product.

Facebook unveiled today video chat powered by Skype, as well as group chat.

Facebook buzz

Overall chatter around Facebook today is about equal to its average for the month.

Facebook vs. Google buzz

Many called today’s announcement Facebook’s response to Google’s Google+ announcement last week. Overall chatter around Facebook still trails chatter around Google.

Facebook’s new Skype video chat feature continues the integration between Microsoft and Facebook, including Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which indexes Facebook’s social data. With Facebook’s entry into the video-chat market, they’ll be competing with Apple’s FaceTime, Google Talk and the new Google+ Hangouts.

Skype mentioned within 6% of current Facebook chatter

We measured the number of Skype, video chat and group chat mentions within Facebook conversations, as well as the number of “awesome announcement” mentions to determine whether the attempted hype helped create buzz. Skype is currently generating the most buzz within those topics, being mentioned in nearly 6% of all Facebook conversations online. The “awesome announcement” hype attempt did not appear to help generate significant buzz for Facebook.

What are your thoughts on the new Facebook features announced today?

Google’s latest attempt at social networking was unveiled yesterday as Google+. As AdAge pointed out, Google sorted out the web and made it searchable; can it also create the connections between people that are making it social?

The major difference between Facebook and Google+ is that instead of having a massive friend list, users collect each other into groups, such as family, work and friends, called “circles.” So users can keep their weekend party photos from being seen by coworkers. And on Google+, there are no friend requests. People do not need to agree to be friends with one another and can view updates without sharing their own.

Can Google+ compete with Facebook?

Facebook vs. Google chatter

Google is currently appearing in nearly 1.25% of all conversations online. Chatter around Google is up 14% over the past month, while chatter around Facebook is down 8% overall.

Google sentiment

Conversations around Google were an average of 79% positive over the last month and are currently 81% positive.

Facebook sentiment

Conversations around Facebook were an average of 72% positive over the last month and are currently 64% positive.

Will Google finally succeed at social and give Facebook a run for its money? Or will Google+ fade into oblivion just like Google Buzz and Google Wave?

Citigroup said today that a cyber attack in May affected almost twice as many accounts as the bank’s figures had initially suggested. A total of 360,083 North American Citigroup credit card accounts were affected by the breach, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets.

Citigroup chatter

Chatter around Citigroup is currently at its highest point of the year.

Citigroup sentiment

Chatter around Citi or Citigroup is currently 34% negative, and the word hacker is appearing in more than 14% of conversations.

Citigroup is the latest in a growing list of companies to face cyber attacks in recent months, with Sony, Google Inc and Lockheed Martin all having suffered under hackers this year. Hacker group LulzSec, which recently claimed responsibility for high-profile attacks against Sony and Nintendo, says it successfully attacked the U.S. Senate’s website over the weekend.

Ad Age posted an interesting article Wednesday about all of the key executives running Facebook who used to work at Google. In fact, an estimated 358 current Facebook employees (out of 3,600) used to work at Google.

Perception is that Google has peaked and is headed for decline. And, according to the article, Google’s 26,000-person workforce creates the kind of bureaucratic slog that deprives creative minds of oxygen, forcing entrepreneurial execs to run for a breath of fresh air. The Googlers who run Facebook know the enemy all too well. Is Google primed for a fall?

We used Social Radar to measure chatter around Google and Facebook over the past 3 years.

Google vs. Facebook chatter

Our query produced interesting results. Since July 1, 2008, Google chatter has steadily decreased, while Facebook chatter has steadily increased.

With Google’s Eric Schmidt admitting at this week’s D9 tech conference in Los Angeles that as CEO he “screwed up” and was too busy to do anything about social media as Google’s CEO.

Google launched their +1 buttons for recommended content across the web today. But the +1 button only shows up for signed-in users of Google.com and only pulls social graphs from Buzz, Reader, Talk and Gmail. Until Google pulls in Facebook friends and Twitter followers, will the +1 button help them gain any traction?

On Monday, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s mobile payment service Square released a Register app for merchants to use an iPad at the point of purchase. With the software merchants can complete transactions with absolutely no plastic as long as the customer has Square’s mobile app. Square has built a wallet into its app called Card Case, which stores payment details, sharing your name when checking out, processing the transaction and sending a text message confirmation.

On Tuesday, Ad Age reported that Square’s Card Case system marked the first major mobile payments launch in a category that has everyone from Visa to AT&T in a tizzy. And while Square nabbed Visa as a strategic investor in April, Visa is also launching its own mobile wallet competitor based on near field communication (NFC) technology, which will enable users to touch or wave their phone at the register to pay, rather than give their name to a salesperson.

Then, today, Google announced Google Wallet, an app that the company says will make your phone your wallet. You’ll be able to tap, pay and save using your phone and near field communication. Google is field testing Google Wallet now and plans to release it soon. Users will be able to store credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and gift cards. When you tap to pay, your phone will redeem offers and earn loyalty points. Google also plans to store things like boarding passes, tickets, IDs and even keys.

We used Social Radar to measure buzz.

Google Wallet chatter online

Google Wallet, which had been nearly unmentioned before today, experienced a 116,483% spike in chatter.

Google vs. Square vs. Visa vs. MasterCard vs. AT&T vs. Verizon mentions within “mobile payment” conversations

Visa and Square generated the most overall chatter within “mobile payment” conversations over the past month. However, Google spiked above all others today, being mentioned in 90% of all “mobile payment” conversations.

Did Google Wallet just change the game? How will Google Wallet affect plans and offerings for Square and Visa moving forward?

LinkedIn and its investors are selling $352.8 million worth of stock in its IPO, marking the biggest U.S. Internet IPO since Google. The amount of money LinkedIn is raising makes it the fifth-biggest-ever U.S. IPO in the Internet software and services sector. Google’s 2004 IPO ended up raising $1.67 billion. The offering valued Google at $23 billion, a dollar figure The Wall Street Journal pointed out was bigger than the market value of General Motors.

Shares of LinkedIn soared to more than double their offering price in the company’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange this morning. LinkedIn began trading around 10:00 a.m. ET under the symbol LNKD and quickly surged to above $90 per share. The company had priced its shares at $45 each on Wednesday ahead of the IPO, and the move significantly higher now values the company at more than $8 billion.

We used Social Radar to measure chatter around LinkedIn.

LinkedIn buzz

Chatter around LinkedIn is currently twice as high as its average buzz throughout the last year.

LinkedIn sentiment

Chatter around LinkedIn is currently 86% positive. The word ‘facebook’ is currently appearing in 29% of LinkedIn conversations.

LinkedIn’s IPO is viewed by many as a barometer of the public market’s appetite for Internet and social media companies, with the likes of Facebook, Groupon, Pandora and Kayak expected to IPO within the next year. Today’s huge surge in LinkedIn shares sends a signal that the market is hungry for tech.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Google is unveiling a new online music service similar to a service recently launched by Amazon.com in a move that escalates the battle to create the next generation of Internet businesses for storing and listening to music. The services enable users to store music libraries on the companies’ servers and access them from a variety of devices via the Internet, rather than on a given PC — known as cloud computing.

Google, like Amazon, hasn’t secured licenses from the four major recorded-music companies. Users of the service are expected to be able to listen to songs they have uploaded to the service in a so-called streaming mode but won’t be able to download the files themselves.

The hope in the music industry is that Apple will launch its competing service at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June and make the Google and Amazon offerings look shabby by comparison, thus forcing Amazon and Google to pay the licensing rates the labels are asking.

Google, Amazon & Apple mentions within music conversations

Google was mentioned within 20% of all music conversations yesterday.

Google music sentiment

Conversations around Google’s new music service have been 70% positive over the last two days. Labels were mentioned in 11% of those conversations, and the mentions were 73% negative.

Content distribution by category

Interestingly, 63% of Google music conversations have been via Twitter, while 74% of Amazon music conversations have been via blog.

Microsoft announced plans to buy Internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion in its biggest-ever acquisition, placing a rich bet on mobile and the Internet to try to best rivals such as Google. The software company outbid Google and Facebook, which sources said offered to partner or buy Skype for $3 billion to $4 billion.

The news comes shortly after Apple was named the world’s most valuable brand, dethroning Google, which held the title for four years. In its annual BrandZ ranking of the world’s 100 top brands, Millward Brown estimated the worth of Apple’s brand at $153.3 billion.

We used Social Radar to measure conversations around both stories.

Skype, Microsoft & Apple buzz

Chatter around Skype is up 793% today following the acquisition announcement.

Microsoft – Skype acquisition sentiment

Conversations around the acquisition have been 62% positive today.

My biggest question is…will Skype work on my MacBook and/or iPhone anymore?